Right now, it’s a challenge for many to simply visit the grocery store. What will it be like once things start reopening on a large scale? Will people immediately resume their pre-coronavirus behavior, or will they be wary about being in places with large groups of people? For the events industry, this is a crucial question to unpack, as it determines how they will approach business going forward. What steps will they need to take to ensure that people will continue to attend conferences, expos, panels, and the like?

In the early days of March, the world began retreating to their houses and home offices in response to the growing threat of the coronavirus, changing — and testing — business as we knew it. Corporate event planners had to make the difficult decision to postpone, cancel or transition their in-person events into digital experiences. It wasn’t possible to gather, yet the guessing game of when we might resume life as we knew it was too difficult to understand.

As we’ve watched events be forced to postpone, change location and/or go virtual, it got us at Fixation Marketing thinking: Do these changes affect an event’s brand?

Not if the brand story is strong.

In the past four months, events have radically shifted from in-person gatherings to virtual events. Speakers play an integral role and can make or break the attendee experience. Understanding the importance presenters play into this dynamic, here are some tips for helping you to create a positive virtual experience for your attendees. 

1. Test, Test, Test

To ensure everything runs smoothly, schedule a rehearsal with your speakers.  Here is a short checklist of items to practice:

The sudden onset of remote work has impacted companies and organizations across the United States and around the world.

At a trade show, we used to say you have three seconds to capture the attention of someone walking by your booth. But in a virtual event, engagement isn’t just earned once. You have to earn it again and again.

The past few months have reshaped the events industry, but now is the time to accept changes and retool. Virtual events might look a little different, but the goal is the same: to tell your unique story.

There's a lot of "shiny object syndrome" driving our decisions as we try to adapt to changing conditions, but our best strategy might be to focus on the fundamentals.

I read an interesting quote about Jeff Bezos. He said that everyone asks him what will change in the future, and really dismissed the question as interesting but irrelevant.  

Yeah. Irrelevant.

It seems like every trade show and event is “pivoting” to virtual right now. For those live events that didn’t integrate a virtual component before COVID-19, it’s been a painful lesson as they struggle to adapt – and quickly. Regardless of what’s happening in the world, virtual should now be a natural extension of any live event, one that provides an even greater opportunity for any organization to further its mission. 

It’s safe to say no one knows precisely what the future will hold in the post-COVID-19 world. Things change by the day, from the science surrounding the virus to CDC and state guidelines for safety. As a convention center whose reason for existence is to bring various size groups of people together, we are constantly researching the latest best practices from all sources, so we’ll be ready to keep our attendees safe when our convention center reopens for “The New Business as Usual”.

We are living in some of the worst economic times in the event industry. We don’t know when we can safely host events again, or even set a date for our next event.